Pune 18 February 2017: Zerodha, India’s leading technology-driven brokerage firm, today announced its growth numbers for the last year.

Speaking more on the business development, Nithin Kamath, Founder & CEO, Zerodha, said, “The investor participation in India is still very shallow; around 5 million investors who have traded once a year and not more than 1 million Indians who have traded once a quarter; less than 0.01% of India’s population. We have been able to make in-roads though. To attract our first 90,000 clients, it took us five years, but with the launch of our zero brokerage offering on equity investments and continuously improving technology offerings we have been able to quickly increase our client base to over 220,000 in the last 12 months."

Zerodha's Growth

•Zerodha has grown tremendously in the past one year, adding clients at a rate of 93% (FY 15-16). Zerodha currently has a user base of over 2.2 lakh across India.

•To manage the growing needs of its clients, Zerodha currently has 22 branches, 70 partner offices and 5 support offices in India.

•In Pune, Zerodha has grown at a rate of 150% for FY 16-17 with a client base of 10,000, touchpoints of 2 branches and 3 partner offices.

Zerodha also recently took a momentous step to nurture young minds with Rupee Tales: a set of 5 story books which attempts to familiarise children above 7 years to basic financial concepts. Zerodha has used storytelling with vibrant illustrations as medium to convey these concepts.

Nithin further said, “Zerodha is committed to improving financial literacy in India. Our educational initiatives, such as Varsity and Trading Q&A are a testimony to this. We are taking this commitment further with Rupee Tales. It is our earnest attempt to creatively inculcate basic financial awareness among children. The concepts covered in Rupee Tales pertain to financial inclusion; pivotal to the cashless and paperless economy India is striving for. A large part of the ‘financial inclusion for all’ dream is dependent on how the younger generation adapts to it.”

Each book deals with a specific topic, peppered with lively characters, and vibrant illustrations. The concepts covered include

1. Savings,

2. Banking & Inflation,

3. Taxes,

4. Insurance, and

5. Stock Markets

Karthik Rangappa, author of Rupee Tales added, “The idea to write Rupee Tales came to me when my 7-year-old daughter kept asking me where I work and what I do. I realised it was not easy to explain what the stock market is or, for that matter, basic finance to Meera. During a casual chat at work, we realised there was no material available to familiarise kids to basic finance. Being India’s leading financial services firm, we somehow felt it was our responsibility to change this, and lo and behold, Rupee Tales was born”.

The stories were conceptualised in-house at Zerodha. The Rupee Tales box set can be ordered from rupeetales.com, is priced at INR 470/- only.